AutoCAD Civil 3D

[#1]

Hello,

I have a general line lable that uses an expresison.  When I import the style in to a new drawing, the expression does not follow.  I have also tried dragging and dropping the expression from the Settings tab in to the new drawing, but this does not work either.  Lastly, I tried to make a new expression with the same name in the new drawing, hoping my lable styles would then find it as they were still trying to reference the expression, but this didn't work either.

To fix, I have to both make a new expression, and then go in to each of my styles and re-refernce them to my new expression.

I have also tried the import styles feature that came with the Subscription Advantage Pack, but no difference - the expression is still left behind.

Is there some way I can get the expression into my drawings without recreating it every time?  This isn't a problem for my new drawings as I have the expression the a template they are started from, but for existing drawings that I am updating it's becoming a pain in the butt.

Any advice is appreciated!

-Stefan

[#2]

Save an empty copy of the drawing that has the expression in it. Insert that into the old drawing using Insert command and the expression will come along.

[#3]

Good solution, and probably what I would do.  But it comes at the potential cost of creating a bunch of "*.1" Point Groups, if you have a bunch of Point Groups in your template that exist in every drawing, and other similar "gotchas".  You can clean all that up, but the cleanup is annoying...  A "real fix" would be nice.

[#4]

Are you using 2012?

There is a known issue with custom expressions and drainage structures moving from 2011 to 2012. I have a case logged 05878384 with Autodesk.

[#5]

In playing today, I did try importing my styles as a block, and it worked.  I then went to a co-worker to show how to do this...  I just opened a blank default c3d template, and imported the block, and it didn't work.  I'm pretty sure I've also had the expressions come across when dragging styles too, but I can't seem to duplicate that either.  At this point, I can't figure out why it works sometimes, and not others.

The real drag is drafters at my office just revert to exploding and doing label edits manually because it is a faster alternative to setting up expressions every time.

[#6]

I'm using 2011, and the main expression I use is just to add a scale factor to the distances on line labels.  We are a land survey company, and much of our work must remain in UTM Grid, but we need the option of lableing the UTM grid linework with ground distances.  The expression is this:

Name: Scaled Distance

Expression: {General Line Segment}\0.999652

[#7]

There's more than that...

The Expressions have a whole slew of problems.  Some of them affect 2010 and earlier upgrading to 2011 and later.  Some of them affect 2011 and earlier upgrading to 2012 and later.  And EVERY version has a problem with "nested Expressions", i.e. a Style that uses an Expression that references another Expression.

Lots and lots o' problems...  You can work around them all, but it takes time to figure out all the issues...

[#8]

That would be us. We created some nested expressions to automatically adjust grate elevations on structures in 2011 and then tried to move them up to 2012. Let's just say they didn't come through as planned.